The 3-year Gendered Design in STEAM Program concluded Tuesday 4 October 2022 with a virtual summative closing event.

Starting in 2019, the Gendered Design in STEAM (GDS) project has been investigating and advancing gendered design through 20 grant-awarded projects with scholars at institutions across the global souths. The program aimed to contribute to more inclusive technological designs in science, technology, engineering, the arts and math by building capacity in gendered design and innovations.ÌýÌý

The GDS program was led by principal investigators Bjarki Hallgrimsson, Associate Professor in the School of Industrial Design, ²¹²Ô»å Dominique Marshall Professor in the . Chiara Del Gaudio, Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Design, is the program’s investigator and Kerry Grace is the program coordinator.Ìý

The awarded scholars worked in a variety of STEM fields with a common goal to identify and overcome gender bias and tackle issues especially affecting women in Lower-and-Middle-Income countries (LMIC). The scholars were encouraged to use participatory design in their research to bring diverse and critical perspectives to address gender issues by including the affected population (often women) directly in their project, reshaping how design challenges and solutions are addressed.Ìý

The GDS Program, centrally managed and coordinated by ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, was made possible by a $1.1million grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).Ìý

For the first year, a call for expression of interest and proposal submission was executed. Following the award announcement in September 2020, ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University centrally lead and coordinated a hub of activities to explore, build knowledge and advance gendered design thinking. Activities for the awarded scholars included multi-day workshops that: encouraged networking and collaborative discoveries; explored the interconnection between power, design, and gender; and investigated the prototyping aspects of the research projects evolving the notion of what prototypes are and how they can be used. Information and knowledge sharing were enhanced with the release of a GDS Bulletin.ÌýÌý

The Program was supported by 10 interdisciplinary experts, 15 Research Assistants, four RA Coordinators and a gender expert based at ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University throughout the Program, in collaboration with the expertise and knowledge of three Regional Experts for Africa, Asia and Latin America.Ìý

Despite delays and ongoing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Program and the 20 project teams were able to adapt, learn and continue with research activities.

The achievements were celebrated at a closing event hosted from campus at ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ with academic partners attending virtually. A series of short videos, created by RAs from ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, on each of the projects .Ìý

Learn more about the GDS Program and the funded research projects.ÌýÌý

Bjarki Hallgrimsson“It has been an awarding and humbling experience to work with the 20 projects spread out over the world. The enthusiasm shown by our colleagues in Africa, Latin America and Asia is clearly indicative of how important community-oriented STEAM work with a focus on Gender is. This project has not only mobilized a strong collaboration between academics and communities in the Northern and Southern hemispheres alone; it has created an opportunity for researchers across the ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ campus to work together with a common goal and for students to do truly interdisciplinary work across four Faculties.”Ìý

Dominique Marshall “We tried to keep the definitions of “gender” and of “design” wide open from the start and watched how university colleagues handled these notions across disciplines, geographical areas, together with the extraordinary local communities with whom they partnered.” Ìý

Click on image below to view downloadable PDF of Final GDS Report poster

The was held June 25-July 3, 2022. The conference theme focused on the following:

• How has the discipline of design research responded?
• Can design and design research bring the insights and methods needed to transform conflict into collaboration?

The GDS authored, “” is available for download below and as part of the .

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DRS2022 is the biggest and most ambitious DRS conference to date. The conference brings together over 800 participants and 315 paper presentations which you can find in this volume of conference paper abstracts. DRS2022 extends the field of design research further outwards, bringing new perspectives to disciplines such as anthropology, politics, economics, healthcare, and others. Core subject areas continue to develop, with new methods, approaches, technologies, and philosophies all evident in these proceedings. Also emerging is a focus on how to deal with our uncertain futures, for example through societal transitions, transdisciplinarity, transformations, and pluriversality. The themes that have emerged for DRS2022 represent a rich snapshot of the current state of the art in world design research.

• Issue One January 2021
• Issue Two March 2021
• Issue Three May 2021
• Issue Four July 2021
• Issue Five November 2021

Have an idea for a future Bulletin?

, for the GDS Bulletin

Ìýfor the GDS Bulletin Open Learning section

Issue One

Issue Two

Issue Three

Issue Four

Issue Five

This all-online conference was a watershed event in creating a respectful space for us to grapple with the tensions, paradoxes and pluralities of human-centred designing to generate substantial learning for students, professionals and researchers.

The ServDes.2020 website will soon become a rich repository of the presentations and session recordings where so many had willingly stepped into complex terrains to move beyond assumed or established frames of reference, that have largely been western, privileged and market-centred agendas until now. The diversity of participants and attendees, almost 50% from outside of Europe, was a significant achievement in the history of ServDes Conference series in providing a platform for hearing stories we rarely hear in the dominant design discourses, particularly from Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.

All these contributions together have shaped what kinds of conversations, approaches and ways of being could be possible, if we are open to engage respectfully with plural ontologies and episteme. Our commitment to, not just acknowledge, but to respectfully engage with Indigenous sovereignty was also registered as another significant benchmark.

Yoko Akama – GDS Regional Expert for Asia, Associate Professor: Communication Design, School of Design, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University, Australia

ServDes.2020 Tensions Paradoxes Plurality:

There were over 100 online discussions, presentations, and workshops. These are Yoko’s top picks that have key GDS themes, agendas, and issues:

Theme – Indigenous Knowledges and Decolonising:

• – Norman Sheehan, Honorary Professor, University of Queensland and Dr Tristan Schultz, Relative Creative
• – Dr Tristan Schultz, Relative Creative
• – Peter West, RMIT University
• Experimenting with design tools for just public services – Paula Hardie, Griffith University, Brisbane
• What the Popol Vuh can teach design – Ricardo Sosa, Auckland University of Technology
• Telling stories: Moving beyond empathy tools to reciprocity – Giti Datt, University of Technology, Sydney; Lucy Klippan, University of Technology, Sydney; Helen Eason, Nelly’s Healing Centre; and Juanita Sherwood, Nelly’s Healing Centre
• Design enabling pluralities of voices, re-distribution of power – Satu Miettinen, University of Lapland, Finland and Nicola Morelli
• Aotearoa New Zealand Panel: Rangatirangatanga mo te Oranga – Innovation in systems and service change for equitable cultural spaces – Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Founding member Nga Aho Chairperson; Angie Tangaere, Social Intrapreneur, The Southern Initiative; and Penny Hagen, Director, Auckland Co-design Lab, The Southern Initiative

Theme – Feminism, Gender, Race:

• Bespoke tools for co-designing diverse and inclusive feminist futures – Hannah Korsmeyer, Monash University and Allison Edwards, Wonderlab, Monash University
• Categorising people: Tensions in critical approaches to design – Kate McEntee, Monash University
• Designing for informal services: A participatory approach to prevent sexual violence within a university – Bridget Malcolm, UTS Design Innovation Research Centre
• Teu le Va (nurture the space) in-between intersectionality – Marion Muliaumaseali’I, RMIT University